Robby Bowles, BME Associate Professor and Adjunct Associate Professor in Orthopaedics, has just been awarded a new NIH grant with his collaborative research team at Utah and UPenn. Robby’s group has discovered a protein with no prior known function (ZNF865), that his work recently identifies as regulating key processes in aging, specifically cell senescence. Arthritis disorders and back pain are linked to cell senescence, which contributes to back pain through the expression of an array of molecules. The Bowles group has shown that they can use ZNF865 to regulate these aging processes, hence demonstrating the potential as a possible new therapeutic to target back pain, broader musculoskeletal disorders, and a variety of other senescence-related disorders (e.g., Parkinsons, Alzheimers, cardiovascular disease, cancer). The Bowles research collaboration between BME, Huntsman Cancer Institute, Orthopaedics, and UPenn is long-standing, allowing the utility of this protein ZNF865 to be demonstrated across a broad range of tissues and organs. While this new NIH 5-year grant project focuses specifically on the role of ZNF865 in back pain, Bowles’ primary research interest, ZNF865 has broader implications for human health. The ability to regulate cell senescence could have applications to cancer, neurodegenerative disorders, and cardiovascular disease. Bowles comments, “It’s been extremely rewarding as a scientist to work on a gene/protein with an unknown function and begin to provide the first understanding of its role in biology and human health.” Further description of ZNF865 can be found in the Bowles lab publication at: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.10.25.563801v1
Dr. Robby Bowles